Half of All Churches in America are Growing During this Crisis???

How amazing is that? We went
from around 10 percent of churches experiencing growth to 50 percent, and all
it took was a global pandemic for us to accomplish it.

And good news, it’s not just
the megachurches that are seeing growth, churches of all sizes are seeing this
same growth. I mean you would almost believe that this is too good to be true.

Which is why I started asking
questions. The main question being, how do they know their church is growing,
because the pastors I’ve been having conversations with are at a loss as to how
to even measure anything during this time.

So, I looked into the article
who sent out this headline and learned that they were doing a survey in
partnership with the Barna group and Gloo.

I had never heard of Gloo,
but the Barna group has been around for a long time and I normally trust what
they’re putting out. But the question still lingered, how were they measuring
growth.

So, I went to their Facebook
page and asked, and a young man told me to listen to a podcast that would go
live that night and they would explain it. So I did, and they gave the
statistic again, but never an explanation on how they actually measured growth.

I went back to the young man,
and explained that I had heard the podcast but they never discussed how they
came up with the number. So, he said a new blog would come out later that week
that would explain in more detail. Make sure to read that.

That blog never addressed it
either.

At this point, I was so
frustrated that no one would just tell me how they asked the question, that I
did what I should have done from the beginning, I signed up to take the survey
myself.

Only to be given an error
message before getting to the first question.

Not wanting to give up, I
commented on the blog page hoping the author might give me a reply, but
unfortunately he never did.

Normally I love the material
this author puts out, but I just wish he would’ve done more to clarify his post
and the survey he used.

Here’s why…

For most of us, moving our
services online is a new and unfamiliar experience. I don’t know a lot about
other platforms, but if you happen to be using Facebook, the numbers they show
you can be very misleading.

Let me give you an example.
My church has two campuses, and before we went online we were averaging around
750 people in total weekend attendance.

For Easter, we went “Live” on
Facebook at six different times. Here’s the main numbers Facebook shows me for
just one of those service times.

People Who Saw It: 4,025

Number of Views: 2,300

Engagements: 2,400

If those are the only numbers
I looked at, I would conclude my church was growing by over 300 percent. Why
are we paying a mortgage? Let’s sell everything and move online forever, right?

But, hold on a second, I was
watching that service and we never had more than 140 devices viewing at any one
time. So, what gives?

Well, if you dig a little
deeper into Facebook video insights I start getting some numbers I don’t like
as much.

3 Second Views: 2,300

Average Watch Time: 1 minute
and 27 seconds

Now, I can start to see that
those first set of numbers don’t mean very much. You wouldn’t count a 3 second
view as growth would you? It would almost be like counting every car that
drives by your church during service as a guest.

I’m afraid that may be what
some of us are doing.

And don’t get me wrong, I
think taking our services online gives the opportunity for people to check out
our churches and learn about Jesus, who may have never stepped foot in our
churches before.

That’s a very good thing. I’m
hoping and praying that some of those people decide to step through the doors
of our churches when we’re able to gather again. Some probably will, many of
them won’t. That’s just reality.

I’m also not naïve enough to
think that everyone who has normally attended our church in the past, is
watching our services online. Online works for some people, and for some it
doesn’t. I’m sure there’s a percentage of our church people who are just
enjoying sleeping in on Sundays. Again, let’s hope and pray they come back when
we start gathering in person. Some will, some probably won’t. Again, that’s
reality.

So, what about those numbers?
What do we do with them?

Most of us would probably be
better off just ignoring them. There’s more important things you could be
doing.

For example, each week you
could personally call every person who has attended your church in the past 6
months. Ask them how they’re doing, and how you can pray for them.

Doing things like that is
going to be way more beneficial, than looking at some artificial number.

The people who come to your
church when this is all over, are going to be the people you made a connection
with, not the people who viewed a few seconds of your service while they were
scrolling one morning.

One thought on “Half of All Churches in America are Growing During this Crisis???”

Thanks you for posting this. Many pastors who have not been online until recently, are getting fooled or perhaps too high over the numbers they are seeing on FB live. People may watch for a few mins then, keep scrolling. Perhaps taking the sermon and chopping it up into 1min snippets to post might be better for engagement purposes. Perhaps people are more apt to view a 1 min snippet than sit for 30mins and listen.